I DO hope John Bishop gets some great new comedy material out of the HS2 project. The whole thing is a joke.

You may recall the government’s obsession with Concorde in the 1970s which was going to transform air travel… and it did for a tiny minority who could afford the enormous cost of a ticket.

In reality Concorde was a vanity project that did nothing for anyone other than politicians and the rich and famous who were able to cross the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound.

For the average family Concorde was as relevant to their lives as Sputnick. The entire Concorde fleet was retired in 2003 without benefitting a single working family.

It was Freddie Laker who gave the public access to air travel with his Sky Train bringing ticket prices within the reach of the average traveller and the rest is history.

Sky Train did nothing for the prestige of politicians but an awful lot for families and businesses giving them affordable access to new destinations.

I suspect HS2 will be no more than another vanity project from which few will benefit. The reduced time taken to travel from London to Manchester will be pointless to many, depending where they live.

The premium cost of tickets on HS2 is likely to be beyond all but a small minority of passengers who, for various reasons, do not wish to travel with the general public. I doubt shaving 40 minutes off their journey will transform our fortunes.

Surely the billions put aside for HS2 could be better used improving the service and reducing the cost of rail transport to enable more people to travel by train instead of our overcrowded roads.

At the moment we are rattling along ancient track on crowed outdated trains paying inflated prices for our tickets. Transforming that scenario would make more sense than building Concorde on wheels for a select few.

IT'S CRIMINAL

A KNUTSFORD lady was recently jailed for 20 months for stealing £13,530 from the bank account of two elderly ladies. A despicable crime fuelled by her own greed that brought anguish and distress to her victims.

This lady was named and shamed in court and in the local and national press. She has been forced to acknowledge her selfish actions.

It does however leave me wondering just what sort of justice system we have when senior bankers lost billions of customers’ money while eagerly inflating their own bonuses and pensions. The enormity of their deception left taxpayers to bail out UK banks to the tune of £850 billion.

And here’s where I have a problem. How many of those bankers were named and shamed in a court of law or faced a lengthy spell in jail?

The law (rightfully) came down hard on the lady convicted of stealing £13k but for wealthy bankers with influential friends and millions squirrelled away I see no such justice.

You can send your stories to Vic at vicbarlow@icloud.com